Now the Night Begins

French film director Guiraudie (Stranger by the Lake) focuses on the overlap of violence, power, and rampant sexual desire in his psychologically taxing and deeply disconcerting tale. Forty-year-old Gilles upends a lazy afternoon visit to his neighbors, the 90-something Grampa, his daughter, Mariette, and her teenage granddaughter, Cindy, by taking a sexual fantasy involving Grampa’s underwear too far. Before they know Gilles is the culprit, Mariette reports the underwear theft and Gilles becomes the target of gruesome police brutality. As he bumbles through the rest of the summer, making and breaking dates with former lovers and cruising the beach, Gilles struggles with his confusing sexual feelings for Grampa and gives in to Cindy’s increasingly brazen advances. In a sudden shift, Gilles witnesses the menacing chief of police drowning a man. The chief attempts to intimidate Gilles and ignites a perplexing all-consuming romance between them, though Gilles worries he only acquiesces to avoid being killed himself. Guiraudie never shies away from any darkness, offering frank, unpleasant descriptions of Gilles’s nearly sociopathic desires and dreams but offering little reason for the reader’s investment. All but the most steely fans of sadistic thrillers will find the novel too aimless and disturbing. (Mar.)